UntitledNo4

Metro AG owns Media Markt and Saturn[1], both sell electronics, including computers. Judging by their stores, most of these computers are PCs (although they do sell Apple computers as well).

Media Markt, is Europe's largest retailer of consumer electronics[2].

Saturn is one of the big retailers of consumer electronics in Germany, and have stores in some other European countries[3].

So perhaps Microsoft could have won that one, but at what cost? Pissing off one of their biggest retailers? I don't know for sure, but it seems very likely that Microsoft wouldn't want to do that and made the decision to back off instead.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_AG

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Markt

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_(store)

I don't know if disconnect.me is an exact alternative to AdBlock since I have never used AdBlock, but I like what it's doing and it's open source. https://disconnect.me/opensource

I disagree. Obviously they have a template for their reviews -- how creative can you be about ceramic knives? -- but some reviews clearly show there's a person there who actually used the item they're reviewing. They also have some non-sponsored reviews in which they don't follow their own template.

Edit - grammar

Having read a few of this person's reviews, I think they're doing a decent job. The reviews are factual, sometimes highlighting issues that you wouldn't find in the product description, there is a conclusion that, at least in some cases, proves that this person took the time to test the product.

As for gaming the system for own benefit -- obviously people are getting some free stuff, but is it as tempting as it sounds? I don't know. A few years ago I was invited by Amazon to join their UK Vine programme. I was obviously very happy to do so and get things for free just to write a review. After a few (two or three) months I stopped asking for items to review for the following reasons:

1. Most of the non-book stuff I got were things I wouldn't care about unless they were for free. And when I did get something I did like (e.g. headphones) I wasn't impressed with the quality of the product.

2. Some of the books I reviewed were really not that good, and were a proof-read copy filled with typos.

3. With Amazon Vine, you aren't supposed to sell (or give, or throw) the items you receive. I realised that I will quickly fill my house with things I didn't want and didn't like.

4. Writing a review about something I didn't care at all about was a tedious job. I used to like writing reviews about things I felt I had something to say about before joining Vine. Not so much anymore.

Since this person is not part of the Vine programme, I guess only #3 doesn't apply to them, but I still don't envy anyone who makes their living by testing a set of spatulas and then sell it on Ebay or wherever.

So, since I think they're providing useful information in the reviews (and maybe review stuff that other people wouldn't bother reviewing), and since I don't envy them, I'm not really annoyed by them. I haven't reviewed the other top 50 reviewers, but I suspect that I'd feel more or less the same about all of them.

I'm 40, started working as a programmer only about 10 years ago, so I definitely have more lost opportunities that you. But I don't care. I manage to make a good living, enjoy what I do and get the appreciation of my clients for the work I do, and that's what I wanted when I went my own way. I can understand though, and I think part of the problem is actually HN. When I started reading it I was suddenly informed of many new (to me, at least) programming languages and other technologies. I felt behind and thought I needed to learn, or at least understand, them all, but I didn't have the time -- I had much work to do during the day, and then no will power to learn anything new in the evenings after I had finished working for the day. So then I felt guilty about it -- how do other people manage to both work and learn all those things at once? I don't know. I just stopped feeling bad about it since (as stated above) I make a good living, enjoy myself doing this and get appreciated for my work, and that's what important to me.

There are two things that I do that might help you though:

1. I only read NH when I'm not working (i.e. mornings or evenings). That means I can focus on my work rather than get involved with something else.

2. When I read about a new exciting technology, unless it's relevant to what I am working on at the moment, I bookmark the page, in case it becomes relevant in the future. In the process I realised a lot of it is trends. People on HN get excited about something and a year later they're excited about something new, and then the old gets criticised. So basically, I saved myself a few hours learning something that wasn't so important to know after all.

Edit: formatting

I like it just as it is, without score and with random levels. I think that having an easier level after a harder one makes me want the play it even more. Please author, if you add those suggestions, maybe add them as a different play mode, since some of us enjoy it exactly as it is. So much so, that I've rated the game on Google play, I think it's my first one.

I don't know if it is really what you are looking for, but I have always been curious about meditation but not the religious side of it, and was recently introduced to headspace.com. I have just finished the first (free) 10 sessions and subscribed for some more. I can't say I'm sold yet, but I'm still curious to practice it some more. At the least, I enjoy taking 10 minutes every day to just take a break from life.

From http://www.luckyironfish.com:

"One Lucky Iron Fish can provide an entire family with up to 75% of their daily iron intake for up to 5 years".

So we'll need to replace them a bit more often than that (not that I'm saying it's not a good cause).

Media Markt and Saturn are two businesses that I'd expect would take credit cards but they don't. Many restaurants (where you can spend more than €10 if you are more than one person, even here in Berlin) only accept cash. Most of the cheap Supermarkets don't take credit cards but will take EC (debit) cards, which I don't think Number26 offers - judging by going through their website. Nevertheless less, I applied for an invitation.

I don't know anything about the banking system in the US, but having moved to Germany from Britain four years ago, I thought the German system is archaic. When I moved, many online retailers wouldn't take credit cards or PayPal but you would have to transfer money to them from your account. Most everyone I know carry around large amounts of cash because if you are stuck without it, you will have to look for a cash machine that won't charge you. You can get cards that allow you to withdraw money without fees, I have one, but those are still rare.

I am curious to know how well this works here in cash-centric Germany. Many businesses won't accept debit cards, and even less accept credit cards, while at the same time withdrawing cash from an ATM may be a hassle since, depending on your card, you might be charged a fee for withdrawing cash from an ATM that is not part of your bank's network.

So, I definitely wish them well, I think the German banking system require becoming more friendly to customers.

Leverage = $380 million.

Now the judge tells them "you have much more leverage". So tey have to work out how much more leverage they have. 5 times the leverage would be $1.9 billion.

That's at least how I understand the text, and I find it very honest of the judge. I guess she can't give them the exact sum she thinks is appropriate.

I always knew the "talent borrows, genius steals" version and it being attributed to Oscar Wilde. While I couldn't find any concrete evidence online to him having said that, I still like this version the best.

Genymotion has one problem for me, which is that things that rely on the device having an ARM processor cannot be tested, so I do like the idea and the suggestions for existing services by other people in this thread. Shall check some of them out.

Same on Nexus 10. Didn't bother me, but I thought it was weird.

There's an interesting dead comment to this:

secretamznsqrl 7 hours ago | link [dead]

AWS does not re-use disks under any circumstance. It is strictly forbidden to protect customer data. Disks also do not leave the datacenter until they have been degaussed AND crushed.

I think the title of the original post is trying to be creative. The world would be a boring place if everything was stated as a matter of fact. You might not like the author's creativity, but I wouldn't call it dishonest.

I don't know if it's that straigh-forward as "not core to their revenue stream". At the time it launched I guess it was supposed to be part of their core revenue stream -- it was supposed to give them more insight into what their users are into, and thereby allowing them to target their ads better. Not too different to Google+, I guess, just a different wrapper. I think the problem here was that it didn't catch on as well as they wanted it, and even people I know who were using it, moved on after a while.

So, I guess it would be more correct to say that you shouldn't use Google products that aren't going to be popular enough. Unfortunately I don't have such an insight into the future.

Thanks!

As a hibernating vine reviewer, I guess I also disagree.

I was offered mostly books to review. You sometimes get an early print full of spelling errors, which was quite a pain to read, especially if the book was not to your liking (most weren't to my liking). So, although I didn't pay for the book, I have spent a few hours fighting the urge to use it as compost. No way I will think more favourably about the book. However, I did spend some time thinking about the books I read and did try to write useful and balanced reviews because I felt as if I was paid to do so, and that it wouldn't be fair not to. This is despite not having to review every item you receive.

Only once I managed to get some earphones for reviewing . they were terrible compared to what I would normally buy, and so would have never bought them otherwise. And that was that I wrote in my review. Would I be more negative if I had to buy the earphones? I don't think so. I'd return them to Amazon and probably not write a review at all.

I stopped reviewing for Vine after a short while. Since I couldn't give or throw the stuff they sent me, I imagined me drowning in a pile of terrible, misspelt books after going deaf by rubbish earphones. I actually don't know how I got to be a Vine reviewer in the first place. I didn't have that many reviews (less than 10 when I started, if I remember correctly). Anyway, to begin with it felt like a honour (and a chance to bag free goodies) and at the end it was a chore (and discussions with myself whether it's moral to throw the stuff away) and I stopped.

Also, a negative review might end up being positive for someone else. I have recently been looking at reviews of Sony noise-cancelling earphones, and made sure to read the negative review(s) as well. One reviewer gave it one or two stars because they thought the noise-cancellation functionality was not worth it. Somewhere, though, in his negative review he mentioned that the sound quality is excellent. Having older version noise-cancelling earphones and being happy with them, I assumed he got a faulty pair and decided to buy them anyway. (I actually ended up buying Onkyo earphones, but that because I ended up by their booth at the last IFA, tested the headphones and fell in love)

Could you please share how you did that in Automaton? I'd love to do that to my backups.

Sound only works for a selected few. Unfortunately I'm not one of them, but nevertheless, in my opinion, Arcade Fire show once again that they understand modern technology and how to harness it for their art (and sales too, probably).

To a Scot, unless your husband's name is Scott, in which case I apologise for making assumptions.

Since it's labeled as a "Chrome Experiment", I don't think its aim is to be cross-browser, but rather a showcase of bleeding-edge web technologies.

I disagree about it being ironic. Unless, in order to overcome his fear of flying, he decided to learn how to become a pilot, and crashed on his first lesson after the instructor said "now you have a go, Bob".

It is, but only if you're Mark Zuckerberg. And even then, it would be so if you meant it as a private message to the Facebook executives and it ended up being public due to privacy settings changes which you designed.

Edit: Actually, I misread your last sentence. It still isn't ironic, unless you were trying to teach someone what irony was and that was your example of irony.

Your teacher got it wrong. Sarcasm is not irony and the saying goes that "sarcasm is the lowest Form of humour".

However, an English teacher teaching others what irony is and getting it wrong is ironic.

Not necessarily only these two options...

About 10 years ago, I started working in for a small metal fabrication company who had their website done just before I joined. The boss never paid the developers' final invoice, and one day they did something similar: they replaced the front page of the website with a message saying saying something like "those people do not pay their bills". Although I knew nothing about web development, I did have a good general IT knowledge, and used FTP before, so my boss, who paid for the hosting account, dug the details up, I logged in and realised they only renamed the index.html page and uploaded a new one. Within minutes the FTP login details were changed and the situation reverted. I truly think there was a way for the developers to get paid before they pulled this trick, but not after. To me, although I wasn't happy with my boss not paying his bills, what they did felt wrong.

Fast forward to present day, and I'm a full-time freelance web developer. In the last 7 years of me being one, I had only two customers who didn't pay their final invoices. I could have done something like that, or could have even hinted that I am able to do this, but didn't, for two reasons: 1. I pride myself in my professionalism. This is unprofessional to me and I will not stoop down to this level. 2. In the last three or four years, I didn't have to look for work at all, it all came to me via current or past customers. Therefore, my reputation is the most important asset I have, and I want all my customers, even the ones who didn't pay in full, to have nothing negative to say about me.

Eventually, both customers paid in full, without me having to even make a hint of threat, so I do believe I handled things correctly.

One thing I did learn is to put two clauses in my contracts: 1. That the code will be hosted on my server, and will only be released to clients' server(s) once a full payment has been made. 2. That the code is my property, regardless of the server it hosted on, until full payment has been made.

The second is to cover the possibility of me releasing the code before the full payments. Even then, if I ever get to the stage where I feel that I need to take a similar action, I would rather delete the files (or some files) from the customer's server and not post anything defamatory about the customer on their website. But I find it hard to believe I will ever even go that far.

I'm a Mac user using a mouse and I love them, sorry.

In my opinion Fab.com is the next step in the evolution from the daily deal websites. The main difference is that currently it focuses on delivered goods while daily deals were about services in your area, but I think their basic hypothesis is that people love deals and will spend money in things they didn't consider buying just because the price is good. Another difference which I noticed is that unlike most daily deals websites, theirs are not time-limit based, but rather quantity-limit, which I guess works better for the suppliers since there cannot be a situation where they have to honour more transactions than they could have foreseen. As a customer, I also noticed two main operating models which I find interesting. The first is where Fab.com have the items in stock and the other is that the items are delivered to fab only after you have made the purchase, and sometimes within a week of ordering, which might mean that they are waiting to make a bulk shipment from the supplier, and perhaps don't have to pay for the goods until they have orders. Another interesting feature they have is they give you 20 minutes to checkout. This, I guess serves two purposes, the first is giving the customer a sense of urgency, a "buy it now or lose it" feeling, and the second is that this prevents blocking people from buying the product just by having it in your basket (since quantity is limited).

There are already quite a few clones which I have seen seen. One is monoqi.com, but I have seen others (just don't remember their names).